During the hours and hours of hand sewing involved in narrow hemming bias cut dimity, I remembered that Maddie still needed a crinoline. Yes! A break from ruffle making was just what I needed. So off to Pinterest I went to look for pictures of antique hoops.
Well. There are plenty of them. And every one is different from the next.
Without anything consistent to base Maddie’s hoops on, I decided to see what Huret dolls had worn. But there were no hoops pictured in the Theimer’s Huret book. Hmmm. Why might that be?
It was time to dig deeper into general crinoline history. Which is more interesting, and also more complicated, than I remembered. (If you have a mind to read more for yourself, HERE is a good place to begin.)
It turns out the steel hoops which made Scarlett O’Hara’s enormous skirts possible, didn’t become available until the late 1850’s. So, the very earliest Huret dolls might not have had cage crinolines, at least not with metal hoops. On the other hand, they eventually did. The question is when – and more importantly for my purposes – how large?
That’s when I remembered Chiffonnette. In the photos of her showing off her beautifully made stockings, the lower edge of her cage crinoline is visible. And since most of the patterns for her clothing came from La Poupée-Modèle, I dug out my set of early patterns and started searching.
Alas, there was not a single cage crinoline pattern to be found.
Back to Pinterest I went, hoping to see if any of the hoops I’d seen had specific dates attached to them. And that’s when it happened.
Serendipity.
On my home page, where the Pinterest gods randomly show things I might be interested in, a pattern for a cage crinoline magically appeared. Evidently, my book of early La Poupée-Modèle patterns doesn’t include everything they published. Because this was one of theirs which I definitely don’t have. And my luck didn’t end there.
I happen to own the first two bound volumes of La Poupée-Modèle. And the pattern is early enough that the written instructions for it are in the first volume. Here they are, as they appeared to young readers in 1863:
Make this cage in large tulle imitating the net. It must be 18 centimeters high behind, and 16 centimeters in front, 85 centimeters wide. You gather the top and you sew it to an elastic forming a belt. Then go through the networks of thin circles (the smallest you can find). We put three or four rows, decreasing each row by five centimeters. Thus, the bottom row has 85 centimeters, the second 80, the third 75, and so on. Moreover, this is only approximate. Only with the eye can one make sure that the cage is graceful.
This means Lilly’s crinoline would have been 33.5” in circumference. And using the formula for translating proportions from one size doll to the other, I found that Maddie’s hoop should have a circumference of 26 inches.
Twenty-six inches is huge. It did not please my eye or appear even slightly graceful when I tried it on her.
In desperation, I finally did what I should have done in the first place. Which is to say, ask someone who actually owns Huret dolls how big the hoops in their original trousseaus are. Thanks to the kindness of one Denise Buese, I now know the answer – 26 or 27 inches. Which means, proportionally speaking, Maddie’s should be about 21″. Whew!
Sometimes, even serendipity is trumped by helpful friends.
To follow along as Maddie’s wardrobe continues to grow, click HERE.